"If all pulled in the same direction" says the Yiddish proverb, "the
whole world would topple over." Nowhere is that folk wisdom more
apparent than on the acreage of Israel or in the first work of
nonfiction by Nobel-prizewinning Novelist Saul Bellow. Late in 1975,
when the author was a youthful 60 and the country was a ravaged 27,
Bellow visited the Holy Landhis first trip since the Six-Day War.

Despite its geopolitical subject, the result is a typical Bellow
production: part meditation, part crank letter, tinged with the doubt
of Ecclesiastes...